A Castle for St. Patrick's Day

by Raphael Kadushin

on 03/16/11 at 12:00 PM

I don't know the best place to spend St. Patrick's Day in the States; you tell me. But if you go back to the mother country, the ideal spot is somewhere raw and rural, surrounded by all those shades of green.

In western Ireland that means County Mayo. And one of the prime spots in Mayo is Ashford Castle, a venerable old pile (first stone laid in 1228) turned posh-but-homey country hotel overlooking Lough Corrib.

The first time I visited Ashford, some years ago, it was with Thomas Patrick McGhee, who was partly raised by his pure-bred Irish grandmother in Dubuque, Iowa. "I think," Tommy said, before we left, "I'll see her spirit somewhere." Tommy is pretty much of a pragmatist who doesn't have much patience for metaphysics, so that announcement was a surprise. So was the old man who popped out of the dense Irish mist, one morning when we were strolling past Ashford's gates, in the village of Cong, and tipped his tweed hat. "That," Tommy said, "was Grammy."

Well maybe. Or just a tweedy old man. Either way, Cong is where John Wayne's The Quiet Man was filmed (admittedly a movie I've never seen, though there are film stills for sale everywhere in Cong, of John Wayne looking craggy and stone-faced, like an Easter Island head) and the village could pass for an Irish Brigadoon.

So could Ashford. In fact the hotel hadn't changed much when I returned last fall, except for the food, which has morphed into something really good. The formal restaurant in the castle itself is fine for a swish dinner. But on St. Patrick's Day, it's best to dine in the neighboring thatched cottage, which houses Ashford's more casual Cullen's restaurant.

The cottage reads like a Gaelic stage set, down to the stucco walls and beamed ceiling, but an authentic one. And the menu is pretty much a who's who of Irish signture dishes. There is a seafood chowder (click here for the recipe) and a dish of local lamb shank (recipe). There is a lobster and seafood pie and an Irish angus sirloin steak. But the three dishes I'd return for, in a minute, are past the jump.

One is a smoked organic salmon from the Connemara smokehouse, which was as good, in its own way, as Zabar's hand-sliced lox (my global gold standard for smoked salmon).

The second was Helen Duane's handpicked crabmeat, served three ways, with apples, purple basil, and ginger. As it turns out it would probably be just as good served alone. That's because Helen Duane, a real woman in her 70s, actually does hand-pick the crab in a neighboring village. I pictured someone in a bonnet knee-deep in a tide of discarded crab shells but that's probably a twee fantasy; Helen could be decked out in sweat pants entering crab-dip tip #585, with one hand, on her own crab-picking blog.

And then there was a crisp boxty potato stuffed with oxtail in a Guinness and cheddar sauce. That may be the ultimate St. Patrick's Day bite, and truest in the end to the spirit of Tommy's Gram.

Well -- I believe the village as actually built by the setmaster for the film.... so no wonder it looks like a little perfectly imagined Irish hamlet: it was!

I love the idea of oxtail in a boxty pancake - yummmm.

www.stitchingincircles.blogspot.com

augustgreen
05:07:41 PM on
03/16/11

The meat literally falls off the bone on those lamb shanks at Cullen's. Amazingly decadent yet earthy food. Thanks for the memories.

Rockie
01:48:23 PM on
03/16/11

Brings back so many wonderful memories of our trip there. We went to Cong and our tour group met with one of the locals and we did a reenactment of The Quiet Man--it was hysterically funny. Even in the downpour that popped up like they do over there.
IWANNAGOBACK......